CaSE says parties’ Brexit stances will impact STEM

The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) has claimed that the ‘very different’ stances of the main political parties on Brexit will have a knock-on effect for the UK’s scientific future.

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Having written a letter to the leaders of the parties asking them to outline their policies on STEM, and having examined their manifestos, CaSE has evaluated the position of each. All parties recognise the great importance of science and engineering, seemingly “bidding to out-do each other in the voracity of their commitments”, according to CaSe executive director Dr Sarah Main. However, their policies in areas such as education, immigration, trade, regulation and collaboration would all impact the UK scientific community differently.

“The Conservatives are forthright in their claims to want to make the UK a leading science and innovation nation,” said Main, noting the party’s commitment to invest 2.4 per cent of GDP in R&D by 2027. “But their aims for international science leadership are likely to be made more difficult to deliver by their current immigration positions and a hard Brexit.”

Dr Main claims that the Conservatives’ immigration policy is particularly challenging for science and engineering. Although their manifesto states that businesses and universities need to attract “the brightest and the best”, their commitment to “bear down” on net migration will conflict with this.

Meanwhile, Labour commits to R&D spending of 3 per cent of GDP by 2030, referencing Atlee and Wilson and claiming to be the “party of science”. Its ‘middle road’ on Brexit would end free movement while seeking to remain in the Single Market, despite Brussels previously indicating that this will not be possible. Labour also wants to retain membership of European scientific projects and organisations such as Horizon 2020, Euratom and the European Medicines Agency. In the UK, it wants to establish two new Catapults, focusing on metals & materials and retail.

The Lib Dems also propose keeping the UK within the Single Market and retaining access to European science funding. They claim that “huge damage” will be done if immigration reforms hamper scientific and academic collaboration. Similarly to Labour, they have a “long-term aim” to grow R&D spending to 3 per cent of GDP. The Lib Dems also see education as key to the country’s future and have pledged £7bn in additional funding to offset planned cuts. According to Dr Main, the parties’ various stances on education could have far-reaching consequences.

“The three major parties have very different ideas for education, which will impact on the supply of people into STEM careers,” she said.

“In schools, the Conservatives focus on outcomes such as knowing times tables, while Labour and the Liberal Democrats focus on supporting teachers. The Conservatives propose a new technical education system that will see Institutes of Technology able to provide degree-level courses, specialising in STEM. Labour propose free adult education and no tuition fees for undergraduate degrees. The Liberal Democrats would reinstate maintenance grants for the poorest students.”

The full responses from each party to CaSE’s letter can be found here.

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You still don’t get it. If we have a hung parliament, the Prime Minster will have no negotiating power, we’ll get a really bad deal from Europe, then no money and it won’t matter what the manifestos say, everything will have to be cut.

You can’t choose between manifestos.

The choice is between a strong negotiating government, or a weak negotiating government.

The only sensible choice. There’s no such thing as a ‘good’ Brexit anyway, the best we can hope for is a least-worst agreement, hope that Trump is thrown in gaol, avoid the inevitable trade wars, then re-apply for membership again.

Yes, let’s all vote green, and have a second referendum after the deal was cut. Easy. And if the populace still wants to leave the EU, Britain can work on its version of Juche.
Energy from wind, sun and waves; resources from landfills, veggies from backyards and rooftops.

Whichever lot get in we do need good debate on R&D / higher education.
Industrial R&D was effectively destroyed by Thatcherism as asset-stripping led most companies to stop R&D, technical departments were overheads.

We are now educating a large number of people in subjects that are not of the slightest use to the community, a fault of over-rapid expansion of higher education over the last few decades.
Grants and financing should relate to value of degrees: maybe a bit of a minefield, but needed!

I don’t see any thing in the CaSE vision for identifying and dealing with low performing sectors and companies. Maybe this is because many of the CaSE members are low performing in terms of productivity increase capability improvement? I don’t know if this is true- but would like to know. Listing R&D increases, Diversity, Infrastructure, People and Connectivity are all ok – but they are uncontroversial.

Even STEM sees a good idea but broadly it will just produce, arguably, more people with the same ideas and who do things in the same way. Jobs might be created, but wealth per capita?

Real innovation is likely to come from outside and without the ‘Yoke’ of established ways (think Lean, six sigma etc). It’s also likely to initially be ‘dirty’ and break all of the tenets of the Precautionary Principle – so beloved of the EU.

Thatcherism had no say in the restriction of R&D, destruction of a company’s ability to pay for R&D started long before, with nationalised industries taking ever increasing support, union excesses and the reliance on old dying heavy industry.

I would have to disagree with Ken about the Thatcher effect: I saw several companies in my field asset stripped mercilessly in the name of economic progress. Most small companies had R&D and engineering departments that were the training ground for the next generation of engineers; hard, hands-on experience, rather than mathematical models and fake financial / economic models. By the end of Thatcherism there were probably none left, (or only in the few highly profitable areas of engineering business).

And here I was being castigated as a Leftist/Pinko for pointing out in our august organ the many failings of the “Grocer’s Daughter’s” thinking. Am I the only person who has noticed that almost all policies from the Right have as their primary purpose the reduction of power possibly available to others. ie encourage retail and shopping…but buy far too much of what they ‘sell’ from abroad: (the sheer unadulterated greed of retail) so that those who might make such (and gain the income from earnings to be able to purchase…instead of being ‘sold’ the funds to do so -just remind me, what is the average personal debt -let alone that from HMG borrowed on our behalf?- ) Our economic society appears to allow only those who market or sell what they neither grew, own or made the possibility of advance. Economics, mad-house, lunatics, asylum…

“….reliance on old dying heavy industry.”
Ken, could you advise which these are. Would you include, ship-building, steel, heavy equipment (earth moving) coal mining, civil engineering…I could go on. Surely it is a balanced economy -with a contribution by/for and reliance upon each of the building-blocks of heavy Engineering -which unless I am mistaken is the basis of all other manufacture? which makes a workable economy and society in which we are indeed ‘all in it together’.

Add chemistry – the very basis for everything else. Germany is good in chemistry. Everybody knows them but nobody talks about them – BASF, Bayer, IG Farben, Hoechst, Sanofi, etc.
Chemistry is needed for all materials, agriculture and pharmacy.
Who is the chemistry backbone of Britain?

IG Farben hasn’t existed as anything but a holding company since the Second World War; it was split to form BASF, Bayer and Hoechst, which ceased to exist in 1999; it is now part of Sanofi-Aventis. Sanofi, incidentally, is French.

The largest UK chemical company is Ineos, which was formed through the acquisition of non-core assets from BP Chemicals and ICI, among others. The speciality chemicals, agri and pharma industries are well represented

The election results will not alter the situation that CASE needs to attack the funding of Science and Engineering to encourage more, especially females, to enter the profession. Immigration and funding will be sorted out as there is a lot of enlightened self interest involved. However, the demise of UK heavy industry is a much more immediate problem as it invokes high imports that have to be paid for.

The comments on the chemical industry are very interesting, whatever happened to ICI! They used to call themselves “The great company” but are now apparently sub-summed in overseas companies. How many generation until we recover from Thatcherism??